It is seldom recognized, commented historian René Dubos, that each society and
every civilization creates its own diseases.[1] Is the peanut
allergy epidemic man-made? And if so, how has it been created in millions of
children in just 20 years and who or what are its architects?

The features of the epidemic continue to puzzle doctors. In the US alone, 5.6
million people – 2% of the population – are allergic to peanuts and nuts almost
all having experienced onset as toddlers. This epidemic tipped into critical
mass around 1998 when the first flood of allergic children entered kindergarten
sending a shock through education systems. Prevalence of the allergy increases
with parental income, education and accessible health care. It does not increase
with consumption. In developing countries where peanut consumption is high, the
allergy is virtually unknown. In the west, children who have never eaten a
peanut experience reactions on initial exposure to the food.

Immunologists claim that this allergy is an immune system abnormality. This view
is contrary to that of Dr. Charles Richet, who identified and named the
condition anaphylaxis in 1901. Richet proved that anaphylaxis is an inevitable
side effect of vaccination. It is a universal reaction of animals to any protein
injected into the bloodstream – the first injection sensitizes, the second
injection or subsequent consumption of the protein unleashes the life
threatening reaction.

Since Richet’s Nobel Prize winning research, doctors have known “how to” create
anaphylaxis using a needle. Without the invention of the convenient hypodermic
needle in 1853, anaphylaxis would not have gained common currency much less
become epidemic. The needle allowed doctors to deliver substances directly into
the blood, by-passing the modifying effects of the digestive system. And with
the introduction of compulsory vaccination for diphtheria in 1895, anaphylaxis
arrived en mass. Thousands of children were made ill or died from what doctors
labeled “serum sickness”. By 1906, the sickness was understood to be a systemic
allergic reaction. Extreme sickness was characterized by anaphylaxis, swelling,
shock, asphyxia and death.

Serum sickness was the first man-made mass allergic phenomenon.

The historical link between
vaccination and mass allergy is rarely mentioned by doctors. Health officials
have several rational arguments for not discussing the subject. One is that US
Vaccine Injury Compensation Program guidelines make it impossible to prove a
causal link between vaccination and a later “onset” of anaphylaxis – that is,
when the toddler first eats peanut butter. The guidelines only recognize
anaphylaxis that occurs shortly after injection.

The second argument was summarized by Richet himself who wrote that anaphylaxis
“perhaps a sorry matter for the individual, is necessary to the species ….There
is something more important than the salvation of the person and that is
integral preservation of the race.[2]

And that “something” was protecting the whole of society from disease by
vaccination – a goal that justifies the unavoidable casualties. A third
rationalization is economic. Vaccine consumers absorb the cost of damage.
Therefore, it makes financial sense to ignore the problem – which can’t be
proven anyway. And if litigation brought by angry parents becomes unwieldy,
government will intercede with legislation to protect them as it did in 2001 and
again in 2008 in the wake of a leaked report that the mercury-based vaccine
preservative Thimerosol, was contributing to the massive rise in childhood
autism.[3][4]

The framework for disease management with the needle began as business-minded
makers ofpharmaceuticals well over 100 years ago met
the demands of government and doctors faced with massive immigrant influx during
the first industrial revolution. Competition between pharmaceutical companies
fed a media soon reliant upon lucrative and unregulated medical ads. In the
early 20th century, a meld of compulsory vaccination for military and civilian
populations and persuasive ads quickly transformed patients into medical
consumers.

Consumers more afraid of disease than the side effects of treatment embraced the
tradition ofvaccination. For vaccine makers, however,
unwanted side effects were balanced with the cost of
production. They no longer used horse blood or mouse brain – the former was
implicated in serum sickness and the latter was known to create encephalitis.
However, an irreplaceable ingredient was vegetable oil. While cost effective and
potent, oils could also be dangerous — they easily over stimulated the immune
system.

Lulled perhaps by medical advance, officials were surprised by the second mass
allergic phenomenon that began in the 1930s. This was the first outbreak of food
anaphylaxis in history and it was caused by just one food: cottonseed oil.

Refined cottonseed oil was a primary excipient in the injected “wonder drug”
antibiotics and in vaccines. Well documented issues had weakened the US seed
crusher industry which with dropping standards was producing contaminated oils.
Protein laden cottonseed oil was found to have been distributed to
pharmaceutical and food manufacturers.

The outbreak might have been investigated more thoroughly if it hadn’t ended so
soon. Prevalence of the allergy peaked in the late 1940s, gradually declined and
then fell from the medical journals, history and memory. This decline may be
attributed to a change in vaccine ingredients. After WWII, oil from cottonseed
was replaced.

This replacement oil was inexpensive, tariff protected, US grown and controlled
tightly by a more reliable industry infrastructure; it came from peanuts.
Manufacturers improved their refining processes to remove as much of the protein
as possible (although not all according to a 2008 FDA report) thus preventing
now well understood allergic implications.

With trace peanut protein in some vaccines, the allergy built a profile very
quietly in the 1950s but grew more noticeable through the late 1960s and early
70s. The first peanut allergy study in 1974 by S.A. Bock in the US identified
its growing prevalence.

Vaccine innovations in this period included genetic modifications of proteins,
manipulation of molecular weights to target specific antigens and the inclusion
of an “adjuvant”. An adjuvant provokes the immune system to create antibodies
while requiring less antigen (virus/bacteria).
Adjuvant 65, dubbed the immunologists “dirty secret” increased antibody
production 13 fold although no one knew exactly why or how. This useful, cost
effective “black box” ingredient combined refined peanut oil with aluminum. It
was added to childhood vaccines in the 1960s.

Two further changes to childhood vaccines were the introduction of the influenza
Hib B in 1988 that was eventually rolled into an unprecedented 5 vaccines in one
needle, the PENTA. Neither parents nor family
doctors questioned these changes authorized by a WHO expert committee and
recommended to governments in western countries. In the documented rush to pull
this formula together, it seemed to escape notice that the molecular weights of
proteins in the Hib B were almost identical to those in peanut.

Peanut allergy tipped quietly into epidemic between 1987 and 1994. ER records in
westernized countries revealed the tip of the iceberg in the early 1990s – 90%
of all admissions for allergy were for peanut. The allergy hit critical mass
around 1998. The tipping point came when the first massive wave of food allergic
children entered the public school systems at ages 4 and 5. Pre-school and
kindergarten teachers and principals were taken by surprise[5]
at the sudden appearance of not one but several food allergic kids in each
school, hundreds in each school board, thousands across the US, the UK, Canada
and other western countries.

Allergy researchers frantic for an answer to this deadly phenomenon questioned
the role skin creams with poorly refined peanut oil, levels of peanut
consumption, methods of peanut preparation. They examined long-shot risk factors
such as birth month, blood type, gender and race. None pointed to vaccination, a
common childhood event with a proven history of creating mass anaphylaxis. It is
not without irony that in virtually every medical article on the allergy mice
are made anaphylactic to peanut by injection.

If vaccination is the functional mechanism by which millions of children have
been sensitized to peanut why isn’t every child allergic? One researcher pointed
out in 2004 that “Adjuvant 65 offers the advantage over mineral oil used in
[other adjuvants] that it can be metabolized”. “Metabolized” means that the body
can break down and eliminate the waste vaccine. This ability to detoxify varies
between individuals and is today an enormous challenge for western children
increasingly weakened by digestive imbalance.

And even if one does not accept the Injection Hypothesis, the balance between
fear of disease and risk of side effects has clearly shifted. Educated parents
for whom official rationalizations now ring hollow are beginning to refuse
vaccination.

In the wake of the Thimerosol debacle in 2000 and the ongoing celebrity endorsed
media campaign (generationrescue.org) which insists that vaccination causes
autism, vaccine makers have been quietly phasing out the use of mercury in
vaccines used in the west. Stocked batches of these vaccines have been shipped
to China and other Asian and African countries where they have been administered
to children, populations of new medical consumers.

In China, where peanut consumption is high, the allergy was virtually unknown in
2001.[6] Recent studies in 2008 and 2009 indicate that peanut
allergy is on the rise in Chinese and Singaporean children.[7]